News

Portland State University students are helping to cut down on waste at Portland International Airport.

With nearly 19 million passengers going in and out every year, PDX restaurants produce a lot of food and garbage.

PSU students teamed up with the Port of Portland and food merchants to take a closer look at how to cut down on debris.

By working together, restaurants save money and less garbage goes into the landfill.

"We found that a lot of the different barriers to food waste are things that we can have low-hanging fruit projects to help engage employees, talk to staff and then kind of get above upstream and downstream from the issue of food waste, so we talk about the prep and materials that go into the products that we are seeing in our food waste at PDX. And we also think about the downstream effects, so that's wasted profit, or lost profit, and that's also a lot of food that can be donated which we've established our programs to help capture that," said Monica Fleisher, PSU graduate student.

Since it began in 2003, the program has helped reduce 2,700 tons of waste.